Hollister School District’s Pam Little took home the award for the Elementary School Principal of the Year for San Benito, Monterey and Santa Cruz counties.
The Association of California School Administrators Region 10 recognized her as “Elementary Principal of the Year” Friday May 2 at San Juan Oaks Golf Club. Little has served in the district for 19 years and has been the principal of Cerra Vista School for the past six years.
“I had no clue. It was a total surprise when they announced it at the principals meeting a couple weeks ago,” Little said.
Little started as a bilingual third-grade teacher at R.O. Hardin Elementary School. Then she became coordinator of special programs at the district level before becoming vice principal and later principal at Cerra Vista.
“She’s taken that site and made it one of the top in the county,” said Dennis Kurtz, director of human resources for the district and president-elect for Region 10 of the association. “Basically, it’s a school with high expectations and high student performance.”
The Free Lance caught up with Little to ask about her work at Cerra Vista and her road to success:
Free Lance: What are you most proud of at Cerra Vista and how did you help the staff to achieve that?
Little: We are most proud of our strong during-school intervention system. This gives us built-in time to group students by need across a grade level or span and use classroom teachers, intervention teachers and computer labs to work with smaller groups when necessary to remediate, re-teach and accelerate student learning. This has been a collaborative effort involving the entire teaching staff. Some teachers are also working in multi-grade-level teams to accelerate and to provide more at-their-level instruction. My part is working with teachers to build the schedule, making sure teachers have the training and materials they need to be successful, and checking in frequently to help keep the system running effectively. In some cases, my part is just getting out of the way. I am very proud to be part of such an amazingly talented and collaborative staff and school community. We can accomplish so much more by working together.
Free Lance: How have you helped Cerra Vista embrace technology in the last few years?
Little: During my first year as principal of Cerra Vista School, the teacher leaders, School Site Council and I committed resources to bring fiber optic cables to our computer lab and to outfit the lab with 36 brand-new desktop computers. This year, we added a second computer lab so that we could enhance our intervention system and give students greater access to online learning resources, as well as to build greater computer skills. We also bought site licenses for programs that students can access at school and at home. We also committed resources to purchase more Chromebooks for student use, and the district purchased two Chromebook carts with 36 Chromebooks each for each school.
Free Lance: What is your personal motto?
Little: I have three. First, “No one cares what you know until they know that you care”. That is not original, but I don’t know to whom it is attributed. Second, “Less is More.” Focus on fewer things and do them well. Most importantly, my former principal, Don Knapp, taught me by example to always base decisions on what is best for kids, and you’ll never go wrong.
Free Lance: What is the most difficult thing you’ve had to address as principal?
Little: Honestly, it’s a personnel issue that I cannot discuss. I guess it could be summed up as improving our staff.
Free Lance: In your six years as principal, what has been your favorite moment so far?
Little: I don’t have just one. I always love celebrating student success, whether it’s a high five with a student who comes in to show me an improved piece of work, or passing out awards in classrooms or assemblies. One memorable day was my 50th birthday. Every classroom or grade level did something truly special to help me celebrate my birthday. Some wrote poems or made cards or created posters; others brought 50 balloons or roses and sang to me, or lined up and gave me 50 Hershey’s kisses and 50 student hugs. The kindergarteners lined up on the playground and sang ‘Happy Birthday’. When the song ended, one student asked, “Where’s the cake?” And then, ‘What do you mean there’s no cake?’ We sang ‘Happy Birthday’ so there should be cake!”
When I walked back to the office, there was a beautiful sheet cake, a gift from the office staff. I remember feeling so incredibly fortunate to be part of this school community. And I still do.
